7 NOVEMBER 2024, THURSDAY
Location: Zoom, 7:00 PM ET/6:00 PM CT/ 5:00 PM MT/4:00 PM PT (Sponsored in partnership with California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, and Texas Map Societies)
Title: What’s Different about Map Making in the Nineteenth Century, and therefore in Volume Five of The History of Cartography?
Speaker: Matthew H. Edney, Osher Professor in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine and Director, History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Summary: What makes the nineteenth century a distinct period in the history of cartography? Some clues arise from a comparison of the table of contents of Volumes Four, Five, and Six of The History of Cartography, dealing respectively with the Enlightenment and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Amidst similar large entries, on topics such as administrative mapping and marine charting, we find three particular topics unique to Volume Five that are distinctively characteristic of nineteenth-century cartography: the very idea of “cartography”; “colonial and imperial mapping”; and “railroad mapping.” This illustrated presentation explores these three themes to give a taste of what is to be expected in Volume Five. This volume is nearing editorial completion, and the presentation will end with a short review of the status of the series of The History of Cartography.